The present is a fine line dividing two infinite spaces of past and future. We dwell along that line passing through timeless moments. I fatten my bandwidth by making things, writing things, visiting places and trying to avoid over-serious people. Welcome.

February 19, 2018

​From everyday activities to the heights of craftsmanship and technology, working and creating with our hands defines our humanity as much as mind and language do.

Our ancestors came out of the trees and stood upright, freeing their arms and hands to be used for more than locomotion — toolmaking became our ticket to survival and thriving as a species, language and consciousness perhaps a consequence as much as a cause of that newfound capacity. Hands are not just the manipulators of tools, but full partners with the mind and the eyes in the way we learn, understand, and communicate with each other.

The prejudice against the capabilities of the hand in favor of the mind has a long history. All developed societies distinguish blue collar from white collar professions. While such specialization and hierarchy have given us many advantages and accomplishments, it has also left our professions more at odds with our nature. Judging hand work to be menial, simple and easy does all of us a huge disservice as it fractures our basic humanity into intellectual managers and manual laborers. We give up half our humanity when we are allowed to think but not make, or make without thinking.

Consider the rates of depression, anxiety and general dissatisfaction with life in our modern world. Consider the size of the self-help book section of your local bookstore. Are you perfectly happy with your life, work and role in society? If you are, you’re a statistical rarity. Or, like the majority do you live with constant stress, uncertain of your place in a company and your role, perhaps unhappy in the knowledge that you could do your job better, but can’t for various reasons? It’s not so much the question of whether you have stress, but whether you can find truly satisfying and enduring ways to relieve it.

Hobbyist (and many professional) gardeners, cooks, woodworkers, mechanics, knitters, and musicians know the profound satisfaction of creating beautiful, useful and unique things--not just in the accomplishment but mainly the process itself. Many find their work gives them a different perspective on life, unavailable otherwise. Their work is often deeply connected to their identity, even the defining term. To create involves the expression of individuality within a community—we make objects that are unique and yet designed to be integrated within another person’s life. It also involves knowledge through problem-solving—the “handy” person we love to have around the house seems to have a magic relationship with objects: able to fix them, coax them into cooperation, and make them contribute rather than detract from our lives.

To create also involves an understanding of the importance of beauty and usefulness, esoteric concepts that we nevertheless consider in everything we do. Usefulness is the primary quality of an object toward survival, or simply living easily, and the fundamental quality of any tool (and what object is not a tool of some kind?). The beauty of an object is a more elusive idea, found in its pleasurable presence and easy use. Beauty speaks to an object’s seamless social integration. While these qualities are difficult to name, we all know when something “feels” right, looks right, or is “the best”: the graceful teapot that’s a pleasure to use, the perfectly balanced kitchen knife, the shawl that’s both warm and beautiful. Living with well-designed things is a pleasure; however, creating them leads to knowledge and understanding that can’t be obtained otherwise.​The satisfactions involved in making something go well beyond simple pride in accomplishment. The use of our hands creates a feedback loop of learning, delight and understanding. That is, the joy of working with your hands doesn't just improve your ability to create what you make, it also leads to finding (or is) a sense of integrated yet individual purpose that I call thriving, an enduring kind of happiness in the knowledge that you create unique useful objects that give people pleasure.

Enduring happiness is a byproduct of thriving, which comes from successful engagement with our environment and fellow humans. To thrive in life, we need to integrate both hand and mind work in our everyday lives. In short, what makes us human is inseparable from our hands — thriving in life is simply a matter of being fully human, accepting it, and getting on with it. Define happiness as a mental and hopefully static state — just how we feel at any given moment with no relation to what we learn, do and make — and we will forever wander the self-help book aisle looking for a new fix.

This is the seed idea for a book on acknowledging our basic humanity, both physical and mental, as a platform for living well. The book will be about adversity, problem-solving, individuality and creativity as great sources of happiness. It’s about the satisfactions of community, common enterprise and friendship. It will be about life as learning, growing and engaging — not towards some static state of perfection, but as an iterative process. It will be about dissociated modernity and what we can, as the clever little apes that we are, do about it to have our cake and eat it too. This book is from what I’ve learned and how I got there. It’s from what good friends and others have learned and how they got there — by working with our minds and our hands. I hope it opens doors to find ways to thrive in life.

November 26, 2017

I haven't blogged about my furniture work, but it seems time I start. At one point, I tried to start a furniture blog, but that fell apart with time demands. But I have started to add recent work with commentary and process photos here on my furniture website

Below, for your convenience, is the latest:

Standing Desk

This commission was for a 6 ft. 4 in tall man who needed a standing desk for writing, possibly computer work.

The design challenge was to fit a 19th century Federal style room. Nobody was interested in making a period piece, pretending standing desks were common then. Nobody wanted an outrageous modern furniture ‘statement’. The room breathed tradition, but it also needed something to relive the plan white walls, white wainscoting, white built-in bookshelves and light blue carpeting. Everyone wanted something made to last, both in terms of design and construction.

Into the bag went walnut, the most noble of American woods. Also went Shaker, the little black dress of furniture design as it goes with every occasion, and a little whimsy because human beings would use it.

The project began as a large flitch of very nice walnut—wide boards, a little curl in places, almost no knots, very little sapwood. It just had one problem. It was over 20% MC. Sometimes I forget to bring my moisture meter to the yard, and sometimes it’s just dry enough that it doesn’t smell wet, feel heavy, or give any other sign of trouble.

So I had the extra fun of cutting all the parts to rough dimensions first, then kilning them in my sauna. I’d like to say I could sit in there with the boards, but they preferred 110 degrees, and I like it hotter. Also, the smell of wet hot walnut is pleasant to sniff, but not so pleasant to breathe for a long period. The walnut got to cook on its own.

Tilting the top would reveal the insides. Rather than look down into the contents of the drawer, I figured the piece needed a second top under the top. I could have just doubled it, attached a breadboard top to the carcase and then put the tilting breadboard on top, but that seemed inelegant. So I revealed and hid the joinery at the corners in the tops of the legs, and fitted the top frame with flush panels.

Here's another view of the top of the case below the tilting top

OK, and another. This photo shows how the carcase sides float. They're only attached to the top stretchers. Internally, I used the drawer stretchers to connect the whole carcase together, as the members are mortised and pinned into each leg.

The drawers were in pin oak which came from the owner’s property. For a variety of reasons too boring to get into, I did not want to make the drawer sides flush with the fronts, but overlapping. So I cut extra deep half blind dovetails. Here they are in process. I later trimmed the pins even with sides, but left the drawer front wider and longer. I don't have a photo of the finished drawer sides.

And aside from the little quarter round details on the legs, the other whimsy I added to lighten up the Shaker lines was a little door on one side. This opens to reveal... well, I shouldn't say, as it's a secret. But yes, someone lives in there.

That side of the desk still looks quite sober at a distance, but I think the little door adds just enough interest to avoid monotony.

November 20, 2017

Shortly before leaving Japan, I told one of my students that I was moving to Chicago. His eyes grew wide and he stared. "You will be killed!" was all he could say. I was very proud that he had used a future tense in English perfectly.

I assured him that Chicago might have a reputation for violence, corruption, and crime, but that it was also a very nice city too, in other ways at least. He then explained that he knew Chicago well, that had visited once, and it was terrible. He related a story about being forced to eat a hamburger in a basement with gang members, and how much the experience terrified him, that he was convinced he was going to be killed at any moment. While his English proficiency may have contributed to the oddness of his story, I did tell him that I would promise never, ever, to eat a hamburger with gang members in a basement. I agreed that this sounded terribly dangerous.

Now after eight months in Chicago, I think I've figured out where he ate a hamburger in a basement, as Billy Goat's is on Lower Michigan, a very "basementy" street indeed, in fact a truly an ugly, terrifying, and claustrophobic street. How "gangy" his burger-mates were, I have no idea, as he could only say they looked "gang," whatever that looks like to a 50-something Japanese engineer.

But not too far away is the Chicago River. In spite of the pollution, and smell, it can look quite beautiful in the slanting morning light. I suppose this is Chicago in microcosm.

From another angle, the green disappears. Yes, it's an older photo, from March, but the city hasn't changed much.

But the beauty of the city isn't really apparent until you step away, into the lake, and look back. Click on the photo to get a better view.

For me, it's the Prairie Sky. Skyscrapers are a dime a dozen in world cities, but there is something special about the American Prairie Sky, the clouds and weather that form over the Rocky Mountains then slide across the great expanses of prairie. What arrives at the edge of Lake Michigan always seems to be a symphony of visual delight, from wispy light to dark and brooding all in the same tableau.

People laughing, talking, arguing eating and drinking close by -- mid-distance skyscrapers doing the same -- and the Prairie Sky orchestra above it all. I do like The City of Broad Shoulders

But please don't break the spell by bringing up the steel-gray blanket of dark, glowering cloud that covers the city for 6 months of winter. It's not nearly as poetic, so let's just ignore it.

March 02, 2017

Frankly, I haven't gone anywhere to have my forehead shaved. As an item of personal hygiene, it has never crossed my mind. It’s just not shaveable territory.

Walt, my 82-year old barber in Southbury, Connecticut, has never suggested shaving my forehead. He has queried the crazy long hairs that occasionally sprout in my eyebrows, and offered to trim them. But his shaving work is focused on the chin, cheeks and upper part of the neck. Were I to ask “Walt, would you shave my forehead?” I’m sure he’d laugh, call me a joker and ask me to leave. But here in Japan, a forehead shave is part of a basic haircut. Apparently, everyone gets them….

After six weeks in Japan, I need a haircut. My friend sends me to Mr. Deguchi, downtown near the Omicho market. On Sunday afternoon at 3pm, Mr. Deguchi’s shop is busy. Five chairs are full and two other barbers are hard at work. They all call greetings in singsong unison when I walk in, as for every customer. I take a number and sit down with 8 ahead of me. This is just fine by me: I can watch what happens before going under the scissors.

Mr. Deguchi sports a spiffy hipster haircut, with his scissors in a low-slung cowboy holster. He occasionally spins them as he takes them out. The other barbers apparently don’t do haircuts. One washes hair and shaves foreheads. The other wields a clippers for buzz cuts. Only Mr. Deguchi wields scissors. The customers first get a haircut with him in the middle chair, then change chairs for their forehead and chin shaves, shampooing, and coloring done by the other barbers. There’s a lot of customers moving around this shop, wearing bright blue plastic smocks. It has a bit of Alice in Wonderland feel to it, except all men with wet hair.

My turn comes up. Figuring giajin heads are few and far between in Kanazawa, I show Mr. Deguchi an old cell phone photo of me with a short haircut. He studies it for a few minutes than point to the back of my head.

He lowers the back of the chair and I flop on my back horizontal. Out comes a hot yellow towel for my chin, which is a most pleasant sensation. While the heat and moisture soak in, I close my eyes and my mind wanders.

I begin to wonder if I have a lot of forehead hair. I wonder if Japanese men have particularly hairy foreheads. Or maybe Japanese women find the light peach fuzz on male foreheads a generic turn-off, the way that arm-pit hair is a generic turn off for American men. I know that I haven’t remarked many hairy foreheads in Japan, but this may be because they have them shaved regularly. Or there's nothing growing there in the first place but Japanese men need to feel sure there isn't. My head begins to hurt.

In 2006, I had a haircut in India that involved a scalp massage bordering on assault. The shop was small, crowded because a cricket match blared from an old TV. Mr. Deguchi’s shop is spacious and silent except for the sound of scissors, clippers and hair washing. Nobody talks. Or if they do, they do it so quietly, I can’t hear them. It is a near-perfect place for meditation.

I'm brought back to consciousness by a scraping sensation on my forehead. From this I conclude that gaijin don’t move chairs for the forehead shave. Or he saw a sleeping customer and took advantage of the moment.

It was a sadly unremarkable feeling to have a razor drawn across my forehead. And it took less than fifteen seconds. No wonder they throw it in for free.

Mr. Deguchi then gives me a very close shave on the chin, soft as a baby’s bottom, and I’m unceremoniously done, up and out of the chair, blue plastic smock off in a jiffy and guided to the cash register.

I pay up and head for the door, but catch a look in the mirror as I go out.

February 26, 2017

Every day I walk to school past the Noda Mountain Cemetery. It is very large and very old. And on my way back at night, I pass it again. The cemetery is set in, or has become, a very old forest. Along one edge is a four-lane highway. Concrete apartment blocks and an industrial area are just beyond. Modern Japan hugs its edges, and yet the forest looms with an indomitable presence, the tree tops far taller than the three story apartment blocks. None shall encroach. It is Fangorn holding its ground.

I asked my friend if it would be considered rude if I walked through it to take a look, not knowing Japanese customs around cemeteries. I have no personal connections with it and didn’t wish to offend anyone who does. He felt it was fine.

So I went.

The contrast between the cemetery and the highway is pretty strong. The cars whizz by on the new asphalt, each going somewhere to do something, the fast and regular pace of modern Japan, day and night in a constant stream, speeding scooters, rumbling trucks, cars with single drivers. At night, the overhead lights tower brightly from the median, letter T’s with spotlight at each end shining down, a glowing spine down the living highway. There is a turn off to the cemetery, but the asphalt there is patched with moss.

It is noticeably darker the moment you cross the street under the shade of the thick, evergreen branches. At the entrance, though set perhaps 50 ft. from the highway, you still feel the rush of air and the roar of traffic at your back. There is a slight feeling that you should look over your shoulder to make sure you’re not about to be hit.

The entrance is at the bottom of the mountain, the trees and graves climb sharply up into moss and murk. While there is a car-wide road climbing the hillside, the graves to each side seem huddled closely together in pathless, impenetrable numbers interwoven with what could be footpaths, but could also just be borders between plots.

Walking in through the gate and up the road, the sound of the traffic softens, fades and soon becomes imperceptible, the trees a shadow of silence descending with each step up the hill.

There is no one else here. No cars parked at the entrance. In every direction are gravestones short and tall, squat and thin, simple and ornate, old and older interspersed among the trees. There is very little low growth, so I can see quite a distance between the trunks, almost to haze. There is no grid, no apparent pattern to the location of the plots. They are spread out like the trees. It is a maze.

The graves are mostly very old, eroded and mossy in the dense, damp forest. Some plots appear abandoned centuries ago and have nearly grown fully into the mountainside. Others appear well-maintained. Some plots mix collapsed stones and new stones. Old families with recent deaths? Many lean towards toppling, settling with the ground sighing down the mountainside towards the highway. Many have fallen over. Others stand with perfect posture, at a sleepy attention. The forest floor is a thick carpet of pine needles, leaves, branches and more moss. And it is very, very quiet. Time gets a bit funny and I’m unsure if it has stopped or sped along while I haven’t noticed. I begin to wonder if I haven’t walked past this part already, in an unwitting circle, but the upward slope helps orient.

It seems remarkable that none of the older stones are maintained. If one topples over, it is left like that. Perhaps this is simple neglect, the family concerned has either died or has moved; but perhaps letting nature take its course with the gravestones, as with the trees, is the intention. The grave lives and dies as the person did, renewed as part of the soil from which the forest springs.

I come across a newer grave with a can of beer set on top. I imagine a drinking buddy has come to sit with a lost friend, remember, connect, celebrate, perhaps argue or have a last word. In the silence I feel as if I can hear their conversation, laughter, grunts and exclamations, then tears over the loss of each other, one on either side of death.

I move deeper and higher into the cemetery, walking between the plots, my shoes wet crunching, the only sound, trying hard not to disturb anything. I come across groups of stone steps, settled at odd angles. I walk upwards, each pause a little eternity, and I look around to see another world.

I find a sign with a bear on it. It looks like a warning. They are perhaps attracted by food offerings left at the graves. At that moment, seeing a bear in the distance would feel almost holy, and I worry that my instinct to survive wouldn’t kick in quickly enough. I would just want to watch the bear.

Nearing the top of the cemetery, I come across larger plots set on mounds with stone fences and gates. Clearly these are important graves.

Farther up I come across a remarkable plot. A large level field on a shoulder of the mountain is surrounded by a stone fence. There is a tall stone gate at the front, open and wide, and yet utterly intimidating in its simplicity. At the back of the plot, through the gate, is a tall stone set in front of a mound. I don’t dare enter.

As I stand there, I begin to feel the horrible inaccessibility of death. The stone is there, beyond the gate. I can see it, could walk to it easily, and yet I cannot walk to it. It seems so accessible, and yet it is just a cold stone. What would it matter if I stood next to it, put my hand on it? Would the Haka Lord answer?

The stone is mute.

I wonder what it is that any of us need to overcome sorrow and loss. Perhaps it’s easiest if we never love in the first place. That is, however, a kind of death in itself.

Heavy thoughts dissipate as rain begins, the patter in the evergreens announces it before the first drops come down. I look up, close my eyes and wait for them. The first is shockingly cold in the damp Kanazawa winter, and wakes me right up. The second seals the moment. The third brings out my umbrella.

I walk down the mountain, back into the maze of graves, now loud with rain. I stop often and look at the vistas through the trees, now speckled and wet in the dim late-afternoon light. The peacefulness is soothing.

Past the highway roar that nearly erases the quiet memory of the cemetery, my thoughts still unsettled and wandering, I find a side road towards home with few cars if any passing by. At an intersection, the wind picks up and the electrical wires above sing out a strange note, half-whistle, half-howl. I look up and the noise continues, a varying pitch that sings like a voice. But I stop and listen, and it goes on for some time.

"I'll come back and talk," I find myself addressing the wires before turning to continue on my way, "I promise."

February 15, 2017

Frankly, this notice, which arrived in our mailbox this morning, was kind of the last straw. I feel a bit as if the universe is making fun of me.

Apparently, there is a wild boar mother and baby that have been seen wandering the local school grounds and quiet streets of suburban TsuTsujigaoka.

Residents have been warned to steer clear of them, and that “if seen, do not to stimulate the wild boars,” or so says my friend, translating with a smile.

Now, I should not worry about a wild boar attack. I've calculated the chances, and they are in the league of finding Trump’s tax returns in the dumpster of the local Sebun Irebun (that’s a “7Eleven” in Japanese).

First of all, I am a statistical oddity in Kanazawa. The helpful You Too Are a Citizen of Kanazawa guide, English edition for foreigners, states that Kanazawa is a city of “roughly 460,000 residents” and precisely “4085 registered foreigners as of January 1, 2014." That’s just less than 1%, the guide also notes. Now, please realize that this 4085 number isn’t just the usually bunch of English teachers in their early 20’s and expat corporate types and academics on sabbatical, but anyone and everyone from elsewhere: it includes first, second, third and fourth generation immigrants from Korea and China, who might even speak Japanese fluently, have kids and grandkids, a little house with a yard, etc.

The number of people who are “foreign” in the sense that they don’t speak the language, walk around in a Carhartt jacket, gumboots and a Green Bay Packer’s wool hat, so sort of stand out for the most part, like me, is even tinier. My friend figures there are about 40 Americans total living in Kanazawa and a smattering of Brits and other European nationalities. Though there is nothing on what to do if you encounter a wild boar, the guide does note that “Information about daily life is given in Portuguese to support Brazilian residents living in Kanazawa (Radio Kanazawa (78.0MHz), every Saturday at 9:45 am).” This suggests there must be at least two Brazilians in town: one to host the show and the other to listen, and possibly more. But I haven’t seen either of them.

As foreigners like me are about as rare as wild boars, we would defy all probability were we to square off on some side street. But the way the universe has been working lately, it will be me: Yep, I'm that guy. Went to Japan. Got gored by a boar and its offspring. And worked as a model.

I can see the headlines in the local paper already: "Foreigner Living with the Other Foreigner in Tsutsujigaoka Unadvisedly Stimulates Wild Boar and Child, Receives Injuries."

A little background – gaijin in Japan do not just automatically get letters asking them to model. My friend has two very handsome sons. They are also what is known as hafu, which is to say they are of mixed parentage. And that “Asian light” look is apparently highly desirable among Japanese modeling agencies and clients. Both of his sons had been recruited in grocery stores by talent scouts, and both had starred in ad campaigns across the city and on TV. So the modeling agency knows my friend exists – so when they need a straight-up middle-aged gaijin for a job, they call him.

“Do they give a damn what I look like?” I had started to think about it. Modeling agencies use, well, models. I mean, I don’t crack mirrors, but then again I’ve never been told I was model material, and never told myself that either.

“Not really. The letter just says they need ‘five foreigners and five Japanese, business attire.’ But we’ll send a cell phone image ahead of time just in case.”

“And I’m here on a tourist visa. I‘m not supposed to be able to work.”

“Good point. I’ll ask and make sure it’s all right.”

“And I didn’t bring any business clothes whatsoever.”

“Boy, you are just Mr. Endless Problems, aren’t you. You can borrow one of my suits.”

“And I don’t speak the language.”

“Someone will speak English. It’ll be just like Lost in Translation.”

While I only saw that movie once, and many years ago, I have very fond memories of it—Bill Murray listening intently to a Japanese photographer explain his vision at length, not understanding a word, the translator summing it up with “more intensity.” And then there was Scarlett Johanssen. Yes there was Scarlett Johanssen…

The night before, I went through my friend’s suits to find one that fit. Sadly, he’s about 40 lbs heavier and an inch taller than I am. Most of his suits made me look like later David Byrne. Happily, we found an old black suit jacket from his youth that was just very big on me, but believable. The shoulders were white with dust, but we brushed most of it off and it wasn’t too noticeable at a distance. He then found some baggy wool trousers that, with the help of a belt, didn’t slide off if I walked anywhere. A conservative tie finished the ensemble, and I was ready to go – except for the shoes.

“All I have are my red suede shoes. But they’re not ‘business’ attire,’” I whined.

The only other shoes I had were a pair of over-sized gumboots I had bought in a hardware store to get around in rainy/snowy Kanazawa. They might have said ‘agribusiness’, but neither of us thought it would be a good idea to wear them.

“Chances are good that they’ll never take a photo of you with your shoes on. It should be all be inside shots.”

“But the letter said the women should wear heels.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

So I didn’t.

The morning of the shoot, I set off wearing red suede shoes, very large and baggy gray-tweed trousers, an equally-oversized black suit jacket from the 1980’s with dusty shoulders and a tie with some made–up school crest on it. I felt a bit as if I’d just been hit by a Thrift-shop truck on my way to stand around a lot of beautiful people. Thankfully, my friend’s (very attractive) Japanese wife came along, and she speaks near-perfect English (and Japanese).

We arrived at a temple that was partially under construction, unsure where to find the entrance. The model agency manager found us and guided us to the temple’s café, down a very muddy pathway with jackhammers running on either side. My friend’s wife had sensibly worn her gumboots and brought along heels if needed. I hadn’t.

We left our muddy shoes at the door of the temple and were ushered into the unheated hall outside the café, and asked to wait in our socks. The temperature outside was about 2 degrees Celsius, and not much warmer inside. We could see our breath as talked, and I swear the floor had a refrigeration unit installed beneath the tatmi mats. Looking around, I noted a poster showing a very cheery priest with a microphone, dates, and lots of kanji that I couldn’t begin to understand. I began to worry that my photos would be used to promote a political campaign for a Japanese nationalist party, demanding the expulsion of all foreigners, or some such. But my friend’s wife told me not to worry.

We met and talked with a man named Honda. He was very nice.

Another of the models arrived, a very nice fellow who introduced himself as “Honda.” I noted he didn’t look spectacularly handsome, and I felt much more at ease. They really did seem to want regular-looking people for this shoot.

Then the rest of the models arrived. Walking up to the temple I saw three utterly gorgeous Western women in spike heels and miniskirts tottering through the snow and mud. Following them were two utterly gorgeous Japanese women, also tottering in heels.

Behind them was a dashingly handsome Japanese man. I looked back again at Honda and realized that from certain angles he was rather handsome. I tried holding my breath to fill out my suit jacket. But then a Westerner arrived, and he looked rather hang-dog.

The agency manager ushered us into a relatively warm room, where at least we couldn’t see our breath. Then the awkward silences began. Honda spoke to me in Japanese and I stared back or flipped through my phrasebook and produced replies as best I could. The other gaijin all seemed to speak fluent Japanese and weren’t paying me any mind. I stood next to the hang-dog looking fellow, noted his long nose and sunken eyes made him look a bit like Gru with a hangover. But he didn’t say anything.

So I just stood there.

After about a half an hour, the manager ushered us into one of the Temple’s larger (and unheated) rooms where a number of tables had been spread out in horseshoe fashion. The manager placed everyone at specific spots, some had papers in front of them, others had laptops. Everyone sat around the horseshoe as if they were having a business meeting. With no shoes on. In the frigid cold. Our breath visible. Enviously, I noted the photographer wore a big down jacket and hat.

The photographer walked up to me and said an awful lot in Japanese. At the same time, thankfully, the motioned where I should stand, which happened to be in front of the entire group, as if to address them. She then handed me some papers to hold. Lights Camera Action.

“Talk!” said the manager. So I did. With beautiful people staring up at me, pretending I was delivering something of note.

Do you have a fear of speaking? I do. It’s not enough to prevent me from doing it, but it is enough to make it exciting...

This time, I had no clue I was supposed to speak until I was standing in front of the crowd. And I had absolutely nothing to say. And I didn’t have a language to say it in. And I was saying it to a crowd of spectacularly beautiful people and Gru. So I felt the gremlins start to crawl up the insides of my eyeballs.

“In Nihongo?" I asked with a squeak. The group all chuckled. They knew exactly what was going on inside my eyeballs, and may have been enjoying it.

“Um, well, we’re today for this important business meeting, ah yes,” I began. They stared at me with professional interest. Such rapt looks!

“So um, yes. Well, then next we should look at these papers….” Their unwavering attention at my every word was really off-putting, the camera clicking away.

“And furthermore, um, watashi no hobakurafuto wa unagi de ippai desu,” they started to laugh. Click click click went the camera.

“and this, um contract doesn’t say anything…” I searched for the stock Japanese phrases I had learned, the ones that came to mind immediately were utterly filthy, and I had to bite my tongue to not use them.

I rattled on a half-baked stand-up comic, successful only because the audience was paid to laugh.

“Daijobou!” It was over nearly as it had begun. Shaking with cold and nerves, we all got up and went back to the warm room to wait again.

While we waited again, I discovered that one of the pretty models and Gru were Russian. Another of them was Ukrainian. The three spoke excellent Japanese, but not a word of English, all emigrants to Japan of many years. Another one of the models was French, so I chatted with her for a while. While her Japanese was excellent, she seemed delighted to find someone who spoke her native tongue, albeit very imperfectly. It took a huge squeeze of the brain to get from trying-to-think-in-baby-Japanese to trying-to-remember-French, and a lot of words came out sideways.

Honda amiably drove us in his Toyota to the next location, another temple on the other side of town. He had a stink bug in his car. It looked just like the ones back home. The French model said she had them in her Paris apartment too. A little global citizen. No one else wanted to touch it, so I helped it to exit the vehicle.

The next shoot was in another grand hall, also unheated. We were to show a Summertime meeting scene—so off came our jackets, up rolled our sleeves, our breath still visible. I sat with a dummy laptop in front of me and pretended to be thoughtful as two other models debated the origin of French Fries in shaky English because it was funny and made everyone laugh.

Then we went for lunch. Honda drove us again.

We arrived at what looked all the world like a Denny’s. Inside were the same kind of vinyl bench seating around Formica tables. The waitresses wore similar uniforms. There was a self-serve drink bar. The menu had beef stew with potatoes and carrots, burgers with gravy, and spaghetti dishes. But this was Japan, so the spaghetti carbonara had nori (dried strips of algae) sprinkled on top, and the drinks bar had a soup dispenser and a green-tea dispenser. I sat amid that group of beautiful people eating spaghetti with chopsticks feeling, well, surreal.

The third location, it turned out, was up in the mountains, at an onsen, a Japanese bath. Honda obligingly drove us.

The first shoot was in a partially-heated conference room. We sat at tables arranged classroom style. At the front, the Russian model taught us the Cyrillic alphabet on a white board. The photographer stuck me up front, and when I glanced at him, noted he was pointing the camera right at me.

Afterwards, we were herded to a banquet hall where the onsen staff had laid out a huge spread of the most delicious-looking food: sushi, salmon salads, desserts, a beef stew (what is it with beef stew in Japan?), desserts, beer and wine.

They arranged people here, there and stuck me at the head. Apparently it was my job to be the big cheese and say “Kampai!” They handed me a glass. They filled it with brown ice tea, I suppose to look like whisky, or perhaps like ice tea, who knows. I stood there and toasted standing up. Then sitting down. With my right hand, then with my left. The photographer took me by the arm and talked to me in rapid-fire Japanese. I really wanted to ask “more intensity?” when he finished, but I didn’t. My friend’s wife said “he wants you to lower your arm a little, and toast lower.” So I did.

I had super-happy, beautiful faces staring at me, the cream of the integrated global business elite, and I was toasting them to celebrate our decisive conquest of the Kanazawa market through whiteboards, lectures and presentations, shoeless in cold temples. What a moment.

And then the photographer said something. We were done. And we could eat the feast. So we did. And it was just as good as it looked. Then we got paid and went home.

Apparently, my fifteen minutes of fame happened yesterday. I was Big in Japan for a day. Now with my nerves settled, I’m back to a simple life in the Kanazawa suburbs, working on book proposals, washing dishes and helping my friend’s kids with their English homework.

February 05, 2017

Tsutsujigaoka is a little suburb of Kanazawa, a collection of maybe a hundred or so houses pinched between a very large cemetery uphill and another suburb downhill. It’s not a particularly affluent area, but in my meanderings around Kanazawa I haven’t come across any that seem that way. Each neighborhood seems to be a mix of modern and traditional architecture, beautifully maintained larger properties with ornate gardens next to smaller places with weedy patches of dirt out front. Wealthier and poorer live together, it seems. And Tsutsujigaoka is like this. The five houses on the block where I live range from ultra-modern concrete with circular windows and a Mini parked out front to a ramshackle house with a traditional ceramic tile roof and cracked vinyl siding. Apparently there is no building code for style in Tsutsujigaoka.

In the middle is a community center, an unassuming concrete one-story concrete building with a large room, a small room, a bathroom and a big glass case in the entry hall where a number of dusty trophies sit, probably won by local kids in their high and middle school sports. The big room has a drop ceiling and awful fluorescent lights, some kind of vinyl flooring. The windows are really leaky, covered by the flimsiest of polyester curtains. Formica-topped folding tables are stacked against one wall. And there’s no heating. I’ve discovered that most homes and such community areas are damn cold as central heating seems to be against the law.

The Community Center hosts karate on Tuesday nights, a reading group on Wednesdays and a knitting group on Mondays. I’ve sat in on the karate lessons, taught by a balding older guy with a huge beer gut. He looks all the world like a slow-moving beach ball wrapped in his dogi. But then he demonstrates a palm punch – and holy cow is he fast! Instant respect. You bow when you come in to observe, and bow when you go out. I meant that parting bow.

Last night the Community Center hosted a community dinner for neighbors get together and have some fun, catered by my friend’s next door neighbor who owns an excellent hotel in the downtown. It started at 6:30, but we arrived closer to 7:30, as we had to teach late (teaching English is an afterschool and evening profession). As we came in, all eyes were on us and the conversation lulled. And we were the last to sit down. Gaijin. A bit awkward, but soon the conversation went back to normal.

To my left was a guy with a buzzcut and worn hands, my friend on the other side. The table had a huge spread of sushi, odd pickled vegetables, unidentifiable godknowswhats, breaded pork cutlets, tofu balls, octopus balls, chicken nuggets, cherry tomatoes and dip, and beer. Lots of beer. The guy in charge of the evening put two cans of beer in front of me as I sat down. Well, off to a good start anyway.

The guy to my left was totally silent and avoided eye contact, largely pounding his beer as he apparently had finished eating. His hands showed he worked with them. Maybe a woodworker I thought. My friend asked him but got a noncommittal answer to his line of work, except that he worked in town.

The guy on my friend’s right turned out to be a corporate chauffeur. He trotted out the five words of English he knew and I trotted out mine. Then he says “shochu?” And I say “sukoshi,” or a little.

Now, shochu is one of those local drinks that doesn’t translate out of the country the way rice sake does. It can be made from a number of things, such as potatoes and yams, but apparently doesn’t entail refining or distilling it particularly well as the odor and taste suggest otherwise. Now, all you shochu lovers out there, please don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m sure it has its merits. I just haven’t discovered them yet.

So the chauffuer wanders over to an aluminum kettle resting on a portable kerosene heater, brought in to make the room bearable for the evening (it’s just below 0 centigrade outside and patches of snow from last week’s storm are still around), pours out a large water glass of very warm clear liquid and brings it back to the table. I thank the chauffeur as my friend mutters “that’s not water…” and put the plastic cup to my nose. It has all the charm of root cellar potatoes on the turn, moldy socks and the burn of low-grade alcohol. The chauffeur smiles brightly at me. I smile brightly back and take a goodly sip. From years of training in Czechoslovakia drinking cheap and warm Slovnaft distillates in a school with despairing fellow teachers and students, I was able to drink several gulps of the shochu down without spitting them right back up, but the mild headache and nausea were instant.

“Domo arigato gozaimas. Oishi desu.” Thanks very much. It’s delicious, I smiled at the chauffeur, wondering if I could find out which car his was so as to let the air out his tires when I left.

Luckily, I had two cans of very cold Asahi Dry, a Budweiser equivalent, in front of me to wash out the taste of the shochu.

The food was excellent and I munched my way through many plates, mostly identifiable, but some not.

The guy to my left pounded down several more beers while I ate and became alarmingly red in the face. He then asked me what I did for a living, which I sussed by recognizing “shigoto,” the word for workplace. I did my best to explain I was a woodworker, but he just went back to pounding beers. The chauffeur meanwhile had really warmed up to us and was engaging my friend in a deep conversation on god-knows-what as it was all in rapid Japanese. I focused on eating more ocotopus balls.

“Let’s go meet people” my friend suggested, “bring your beer.” So we got up and talked our way around the room. I noted nearly everyone’s face had turned bright red, the laughter grown raucus, the hugs and gestures plentiful. It was a really merry room after about two to seven beers each, and god knows how much warm shochu.

The first guy we talked to had a gray ponytail down to the middle of his back. He and his wife had just come back from Paris and Nancy a few days earlier. Turns out Kanazawa’s sister city is Nancy. We talked in French about the Art Nouveau museum in Nancy, whether French food was too heavy on sauces, the desserts too sugary for his Japanese tastes, and why I was in Japan. We avoided Trump.

The next guy couple we sat down was “mixed,” in that he was Japanese but his wife was Chinese. They were very friendly, not too drunk, but spoke no English whatsoever.

I trotted out the few words of Chinese I remembered for the occasion and wished her “Gong shi fa cai,” Happy New Year.

She looked at me puzzled.

I tried again.

She looked to my friend and asked him what I was trying to say.

“What are you trying to say?” he asked me.

“I’m trying wish her Happy Lunar New Year in Chinese, but I guess I’ve forgotten how to say it. It’s ‘gong shi fa cai’, I think.” My friend speaks English, French and Japanese, not a word of Chinese, but he turns to her and tries the same.

“Gong shi fa cai” he says, and her eyes light up.

“Oh! Gong shi fa cai!” she shouts back at him, and at me. That’s what you were trying to say!.... Happy New Year too!

I puzzled for a bit over this. Was it my friend’s Japanese-English accent that made it work? Did he fake a Chinese accent better? But he doesn’t speak any Chinese…. Maybe I was slurring due to the rather drastic intake of alcohol I had willingly been subjected to…. The moment was utterly brilliant in how little sense it made.

Then we moved over to talk to a very tall Japanese woman, nearly 5 ft. 10 in., wearing a pair of parachute pants and a hand-knit red sweater. She was a professional carver and part-time hippie. We traded pictures of woodworking on our cell phones. Her husband was a full-time aging hippie and at that moment very drunk. He introduced himself by shouting “I rove Bob Deeran! And Cosbee Stirrs ahd Naaaash!” He hugged me, then shouted “Take it Easy! Great Song!” So we sang together, rather too loudly, as it just so happens I knew the song.

Well I’m a-runnin’ down the road, tryin’ to loosen my load I’ve got seven women on my mind Four that want to own me, two that want to stone me One says she’s a friend of mine Take it easy, take it easy Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy Lighten up while you still can Don’t even try to understand Just find a place to make your stand, and take it easy

How appropriate it all seemed. Just outside, above the clay-tiled roof of the Tsutsujigaoka community center, was a dark night sky with stars looking down on everything, the roofs as far as the eye could see, mixed with trees and hills and roads, quiet at this time of night, the same stars that looked down on Glen Frey, standing on that corner in Winslow Arizona, waiting for that Ford to slow down, the same that looked down on my missed friends and family in London, Montreal, Connecticut, so many places, too many to name, all trying and hoping for the same damn things in life. Swap out the shochu for Jagermeister, and the octopus balls for baked ziti and I could have been at a community dinner in the Firehouse in Bridgewater: just a bunch of socially awkward people made socially open by alcohol, sharing what they do with people they’ve never met, fascinated to learn about each other, making their way with that mix of successes and failures written in the lines on our faces. And I figure much the same is going on in a community center in Basra tonight, while I write this.

And after we finished, he staggered off, probably to look for his guitar and a clean-cut doctor sat next to me, looked at photos of my furniture, and wanted me to come to his house, any time. He loved working with his hands as a surgeon, appreciated craftsmanship, and wanted to learn woodworking. We avoided Trump.

No evening like this would be complete without a trip to the toilet. Here, I had to remove my big-room slippers to use bathroom slippers, so at to minimize the tracking of liquids back into the clean big room. The problem was that Japanese men are not any more adept at relieving themselves accurately when drunk than American men are. So neither the bathroom nor the bathroom slippers were particularly, um, dry. Still, when in Rome....

I then sat with an Architect and looked at pictures of the semi-traditional temple architecture he had designed across Kanazawa, really beautiful stuff He wore a strange kind of hat that became a scarf, hiding all his hair.

Another guy who kind of looked like the Japanese equivalent of Tony Soprano slept upright in his chair, nearly a dozen beer cans in front of him. The night was getting long.

Some started separating the plastic garbage from the metal and the food, and bagging everything, the good food into bags to take home.

One brought me a take home plate of chewy squid snacks, wasabi edamame, and some soy sauce crackers from a huge display in the center of the room. I thanked her very much.

As we headed for the door, the French-speaking fellow offered us a cup of espresso from a Bialetti sitting on a propane camping stove he had brought in. The coffee was excellent. And we stayed to talk longer.

The Chinese woman came up to us at the door.

“She says you’re kind of thin for an American,” my friend translated. “Also, in fairness, she admits she’s kind of fat for a Chinese.” I doubled over in laughter. She smiled back and looked satisfied that she had made an important point.

On the short walk back to my friend’s house, I looked up into a heavily overcast sky. Man does it rain and snow in Kanazawa! And more snow on its way tomorrow! But I knew those common stars were right above. Just hard to see them sometimes.

I'm getting that gitchy feeling in my gut these days, that it's deja vu all over again. Japan is off my mind and American Politics are on it. Sorry light-entertainment seekers -- a semi-serious post follows.

I've long felt humor to be a great antidote to the human condition, which is chronic and can't be much improved even with modern antibiotics of anxiolytics. But humor simply moves the issue to one side, for a moment, and needs to be applied again and again. This is perhaps humor's most attractive feature: that it's not a solution--for solutions require heads to be knocked. And once the head knocking starts, it kind of takes over and where it ends, nobody can tell, and the suffering is universal. Except for the sociopaths. I think they have fun.

The cacophony of calls for harmony and peace amid simmering rage, righteous indignation, and desperate times seem to be reaching new heights, a new normal perhaps: It is time to Make America Great Again. It is time for White Rose protests. It is time. It is time.

I could pick and choose all the points I agree with personally and don't, see partial use but want to offer other considerations, name my tribe and find support with them -- take a side -- and yet something worries me in that. I feel like I'm lining up to knock heads. So I prefer unsolved dithering as a primary mode of social organization. Fewer heads get knocked. Less gets solved. We can each get on with our lives better, sit around a table and tell tales of the fish that got away, the amazing bar you came across, the wonderful things our kids are up to.

The Just Fight. To fight for justice. Of course there is no justifiable alternative to this, but the natural human tendency to go along to get along is very strong: and I think it helps avoid fights in which nobody wins. Of course the right thing to do is the right thing to do. Silence and inaction is silent, and can be both consent and protest. Love the person, not the crime. Stand up for what's right but never swing a fist. Love your enemy. The benefit of the doubt. Do unto others. And I know that when you stand in the middle of the road, you tend to get run over. Oh well.

As a kid in the early 70’s, I worried about nuclear war. There didn’t seem to be much you could do about it except worry, look out the window, watch TV for the latest news and if the doomsday clock had moved closer to midnight. Would it be tomorrow? What would it look like? But I was a kid, what could I do? Then Herpes. Then AID. Now Terrorism. Crimea. North Korea.

I think my generation loves “end of the world” movies and TV shows because we grew up worrying about the bomb, nuclear winter and the kind of end game from which civilization could not recover; the ray of hope in this scenario is the schadenboner of survival grief, the sweet sadness that a few of us and our friends just might to have a simpler, clearer and happier purpose in life after the apocalypse.

In 1982, I laughed grimly at The Day After. I knew that nuclear war would be much worse than what it showed. All the dying people in the gymnasium were quiet, serene, stoic. Nobody really dies that way except in the movies. Hollywood gunshots are like sleeping pills and (bad guys) who receive them fall over senseless the instant they are shot (good guys get it in the shoulder, wince a little, then get up and keep fighting). Reality is different and I knew that. When I was ten, I saw and listened to a man die after being hit by a car. It was a long, loud and obscenely painful process that seemed to go on for an eternity. No one knew what to do, so we all stood in witness, nothing more. In Hollywood, that’s three more car chase sequences, a love interest developed, and a witty catch phrase delivered.

I think we should be careful what we wish for, if we wish in Hollywood terms. The end of the world will be much more painful than we might think. I think it's always better to bumble onwards than to call the Moment’s bluff to set things right and make things better.

But let me undermine my own argument:

Politics

'In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms.'

THOMAS MANN.

How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fix

On Roman or on Russian

Or on Spanish politics,

Yet here's a travelled man that knows

What he talks about,

And there's a politician

That has both read and thought,

And maybe what they say is true

Of war and war's alarms,

But O that I were young again

And held her in my arms.

I take a lot away from Yeat's poem published in 1938: both the ironies and the truths. Our lives, what is close to us, will always be far more important than what happens in Washington or Damascus. Had Yeats lived with television or the Internet, in which those things are brought into our living room and therefore made much, much more immediate (though still virtual), I wonder how different his poem would be.

I do recall a moment, in 1989-1992. The nuclear threat seemed passé what with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And somehow in an age of the greatest possible nuclear uncertainty, with no certain oversight of the enormous Soviet arsenal among the fragmented newly-minted Republics, we had an amazing moment of global hope: the end of history, it was said, the pure victory of popular democracies. A thousand points of light. Aren't we still there with even greater volume?

Can we handle everyone getting a say,

The steering wheel having wider sway

Without Mr. Truncheon come a-knocking,

And everyone just keep talking?

All the best fights are in the courts, with words and winners and losers just squaring off to go back to court again, because nihil novum sub sole - the solution is always another problem.

January 26, 2017

Anpanman is a beloved Japanese cartoon character for very young children whose name roughly translates as “Red-Bean Paste Bun Person.” He is famous all over Japan and is really big with school kids, perhaps even bigger than Hello Kitty, which, as we know, is even bigger than Breaking Bad.

Anpanman has a delicious pastry for a head, which he lets people eat when they are in need. His main enemy is Baikinman, whose name roughly translates as “Bacteria Person.” When Baikinman attacks Anpanman, he makes his head rot. But not to worry, Uncle Jam just bakes Anpanman a new head to replace the old one, and he’s good to go.

One of Anpanman’s allies is White Bread Man. But apparently he doesn’t let people eat his face.

Yeah, I know. This all sounds like a really, really bad time with bath salts. But this is Japan. It’s for kids!

Thanks for sharing, Strother.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- We Americans live in a Great Big Glass House on this point. We have Mayor McCheese to explain, with his cheeseburger head and diplomat’s sash, and his godfather, H.R. Pufnstuf with his hungover stoner eyes. For kids! I ask you.

But where did I learn about Anpanman? At a Denny’s-style Japanese restaurant, of course.

where they make burgers that have the cheese inside.

My friend actually ordered one.

Yes, those green beans were just as mushy, tasteless and disgusting as they are in the US and the corn just as gummy.

My friend here likes to call this the "real" Japan, a place just as plasticy and packaged as the United States in many regards. However, Anpanman has a noble background, unlike Mayor McCheese. Anpanman was born i nthe imagination of a sratving Japanese author after the Second World War. He seems to have dreamed of a bean bun character who would magically arrive and feed him, selflessly, from his own body. Go look it up. I know you're interested.

But Japan is not all like the US. I wager not many as many front yards in suburbia sport such trees.

That look as pretty in the snow

Or buses make such extravagant claims for customer satisfaction.

or people with money who make such stark choices in how they spend it:

Car:Yes. House: No. Or perhaps Junior is visiting the parents he doesn't subsidize. It's so hard to tell when you're not familiar with the culture....